Dancing with chickens
Chef Christoph Zoller helps a young aspiring chef find the leg joint. The group prepared pan-seared scallops, roast chicken and strawberries Romanoff. [Photo/China Daily] |
What better place to spend a Saturday afternoon than in a chef's restaurant kitchen, with a bottle of bubbly and some fresh-plucked birds? Mike Peters tucks in for a cooking class.
Agatha Christie's famous fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, was once asked why he wasn't busy looking for footprints and other clues at a murder scene.
That, he explained, was a job that the police were perfectly competent to do.
"Why have a dog and bark yourself?" he asked.
That funny quote came to me recently as I stood in the gleaming restaurant kitchen of The Cut, with one hand around the neck of a raw chicken. Was I really standing in the fancy Fairmont Beijing hotel's restaurant, making my own lunch?
Of course, that was my own choice-as it was for the 19 others huddled around as chef Christoph Zoller explains why he'd always buy a whole chicken.
"They will be fresher," he says, inviting us to stick our noses close for a smell test. "You don't really know about packaged parts until you get home. The whole bird is better value, too-cheaper pound for pound."
"Plus, you can use EVERYTHING," he says, as he quickly whacks away the head and feet and wings with a very sharp chef's knife. "This all goes into the soup for tomorrow."